Letters to the Editor 5/29/14

Once again the General Assembly leaves town amid chaos, with a who-knows-what’s-in-it budget that doesn’t balance with projected revenues because legislators refused to pass the income tax extension that Illinois sorely needed. Deficits remain, backlogs will grow, reforms will be shelved, cuts will be needed. In other words, the status quo continues. Some may argue that Democrat leaders – the governor, the speaker, the Senate president – are cunningly preserving their legislative majorities by postponing difficult votes until after this fall’s election. But no, they just failed to get the job done. As Prof. Kent Redfield observed recently, “When we fail, we don’t fail because of politics. We fail at politics.” –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher